Henry David Thoreau Quotes

• I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Topics in Life

  Tags in Discover, Die

• Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Begin, Lost

• No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Topics in Truth

  Tags in Matter

• I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Topics in Business, Life

  Tags in Ay, Itself, Incessant, Than, Opposed, Think, Even, Poetry, More, Nothing, Philosophy, Crime

• Men have become the tools of their tools.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Men

• How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Better, Might

• If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Topics in Life

  Tags in Run, Conscious
• 

  Never look back unless you are planning on going that way.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Never, Unless, Look

• I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Solitude, Working, Lonely

• I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Topics in Death

  Tags in Advantage, Common

• There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Topics in Nature

  Tags in Marriage

• If… the machine of government… is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Government, Injustice, Disobedience, Law

• The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Man, Law

• The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Topics in Friendship

  Tags in Words, Meanings, Language

• The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Language

• Make the most of your regrets. . . . To regret deeply is to live afresh.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Regret

• There is no just and serene criticism as yet.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Just

• I was determined to know beans.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Topics in Education, Knowledge, Nature

  Tags in Garden, Freedom, Civilization

• Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Garden, Freedom, Civilization

• While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Improve, Civilization

Henry David Thoreau (268)

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Today's Anniversary - 25th November

Births

• 1893 - Joseph Wood Krutch
• 1957 - Robert L. Ehrlich
• 1926 - Poul Anderson
• 1939 - Martin Feldstein
• 1936 - William McIlvanney

Deaths

• 1973 - Laurence Harvey
• 1998 - Nelson Goodman
• 2002 - Karel Reisz
• 1970 - Yukio Mishima
• 1974 - U Thant